reflection and the dalai lama performance at home

The latest Tao Te Ching entry came very timely. Sophia is a very strong, willful, smart and independent child. Theodore often says she is what you want in a daughter when is twenty! She really has some amazing qualities that at times though get in her own way. Then she turns into a high energy, obstanant girl incapable to cooperate. Those times are challenging for all of us, but I came to realize that of course they are most challenging for her. So, I couldn't think anymore, why is she doing this to us?!

To mediate on her and to try to see what is it what she really wants is very important. I can appreciate her so much and easily when she at six years old brings her little brother upstairs changes him into his pyjamas, brushes his teeth, and carries him down with a big proud smile on her face or when she reads to me, or when she sits her class down and emphatically explains to them that them calling her dad a chipmunk was not ok with her and that her dad was a hard working person.

The times when it is difficult to impossible to cooperate with us are the times I don't really know her. I seem to want to know the answer, because I want to be an ancer for her, I am the adult, I need to find a way to help her. Well, the truth is that I don't observe and notice enough what it actually is she is fighting for. It is not really the cookie she wants to have right before dinner, or the third book before bedtime.

She wants to be in control and make her own decisions.

I have to work with her on that, of how to make choices, and how to find that window into her to find our what it is she really wants.

I am proud of her, she is testing and pushing my limits much further than I ever thought they could go. She is making me see a different kind of parent from the one I always envisioned myself to be. There can be so much growth happen if one is willing to notice and see the opportunity!

Here she is, continuing her rehearsal for the Dalai Lama show at school. Look at her face, that is what I call concentration. Mateo wanted to join her. Although the sitting just was too long, he loved getting in and out of the poses and up and down from the stage. He is a great admirer of hers! How lucky we all are to be together...